Personal
identity becomes meaningful in the context of community. Yet, community
life is declining in the United States. The following may offer some
perspective on that situation.

Gwinnett
County: The Idea of an Anti-Community

There is a place called Gwinnett Countyjust outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Since 1984 it has been
the fastest-growing county in the United States for counties with 100,000
or more residents. From a population of 72,300 in 1970, Gwinnett has
grown into a bustling megasuburban complex in which more than one quarter
million persons live. You could call it a complex for want
of a better term to describe the Gwinnett phenomenon. This is not a
city or conventional suburb, but a new type of community - or population
center - which is peculiar to American life in the 1980s. You
can find much the same type of place near other large cities: In Orange
County, California, for instance; or in DuPage County, Illinois, just
west of Chicago.

When
a newspaper reporter (from the Wall Street Journal) wandered around
the large shopping mall which serves as Gwinnett Countys unofficial
community center, she was struck by the large number of people wearing
tee shirts which promoted athletic teams associated with other places.
One was worn by a fan of the Chicago Cubs; another, by a fan of the
Boston Celtics; and so forth. None of the tee shirts advertised anything
connected with Gwinnett County or its surrounding area. So, too, the
reporter noticed that one new resident of the county had designed the
deck of her dream home to be built around a street sign
taken from an unglamorous town in Ohio where she and her husband had
once lived. If Gwinnett County physically has the people, their hearts
seem to be located elsewhere.

What
is it about this fast-growing community in northern Georgia which makes
it less a community than a place without a sense of community? The woman
who built the above-mentioned deck made the following observation: Nothing
here makes sense. the roads dont make sense. Their names change.
Nothing is convenient. Nothing is close - not Atlanta, not your stores,
not your family, not your friends. Gwinnett County is a collection
of houses and commercial buildings put together quickly be real-estate
developers. There appears to be little coordination or planning. Each
developer simply developed his own subdivision, turning farmland into
residential lots arranged in a spaghetti-like grid of streets, none
of which connected with the streets in other neighborhoods or had the
same name. There were few sidewalks or street lights in these developments.
There was no public transportation. I wouldnt know if there
was a major sewage spill across the street. Theyre in another
civic association, a resident declared.

Public
transportation is one institution which makes for a sense of community.
People of different occupations, ages, and experiences sit side by side
on buses, and sometimes they talk. In the case of Gwinnett County, there
are no public buses. Only 5 percent of its residents commute each day
to work in downtown Atlanta. The remainder are evenly divided between
those who work in other counties and who work in another part of Gwinnett
County itself. As a result, traffic is moving in every which direction,
and has become steadily more congested.

The
traffic flow in the county is slow and chaotic. The newspaper reporter
observed that at any given time a good number of people seem to
be driving around in circles, lost. It used to take a certain
woman three hours to drive her daughter into downtown Atlanta each week
for a 45-minute violin lesson. Part of the traffic problem may be the
result of a decision by the Gwinnett county authorities not to hook
up with Atlantas light-rail system. Some view this as a conscious
decision to separate the predominantly white suburban areas from the
black population in the inner city. However that may be, Gwinnett County
has evidently preferred the rugged individualism of solo
drivers on the open highway to any system smacking of community concerns.

What
is the focus of community in most cities and towns? It may be the corner
grocery store, or a popular movie theater where the teenagers hang out,
or, perhaps, a neighborhood drug store, hardware store, or restaurant.
While Gwinnett County has commercial establishments to handle these
various functions, it has grown too big too fast to allow any of them
to acquire the fond traditions associated with community. The chains
of super stores with their discount prices and the Seven-Eleven or Kangaroo
type of convenience store have moved into this impersonal, nowhere kind
of neighborhood. In such a place, there is little for teenagers to do
for entertainment except to taunt the red-coated security guards at
the Gwinnett Place Mall.

Because
Gwinnett County is populated mainly by corporate transients, few have
roots in the community. There are, for instance, few grandparents among
the Yuppie invaders. Because its affluent lifestyle generally requires
both husband and wife to work, the neighborhoods of Gwinnett County
lack the informal community networks which in other places and times
have been created by sociable housewives. It is just a collection of
high-achieving individuals who work long and hard for their money, and
then drive home alone to relax in the privacy of their own homes with
the help of a television set and VCR.

When
we consider the type of society in Gwinnett County, let it be clearly
understood: We are not talking here of social or economic deprivation.
Gwinnett County represents the best, not the worst, which American society
has to offer. This is where the cream settles which has risen to the
top. The social dregs do not live here because they cannot afford it.

I
should correct myself. There is at least one person living in Gwinnett
County who, by community standards, does not deserve to be living there.
He is a 68-year-old curmudgeon named Fred Dutton who has lived all his
life within a three-mile radius of his current property, for which he
paid $125 years ago. This he has turned into a combination of a private
rabbit-hunting preserve and a dumping ground for old trailers, bird
cages, and lawn mowers. Duttons eyesore is located a short distance
from the brick-framed entrance to one of the countys most expensive
neighborhood developments. Such a direct threat to her property value
moved one unhappy resident to complain: That should have been
cleaned out long before anybody moved in here. They should have bribed
that guy to get him out. Fred Dutton, for his part, has an equally
low opinion of his new neighbors, who he thinks have sold their souls
for material advancement. Its getting to the point around
here where youre going to have to hire somebody to cry at your
funeral, he said.

I
do not wish to pick on the actual Gwinnett County, Georgia. There is
probably a lingering southern charm to this place, which is more than
the comparable suburban sprawls next to New York City, Chicago, or Los
Angeles would have. The county was named after Button Gwinnett, a signer
of the Declaration of Independence. Here at least is a vestige of community
tradition. No, for our purposes, Gwinnett County is an idea which can
apply to any number of places. This is the idea of a community which
is no community - an anti-community, if you will. In the
forces which have transformed Gwinnett County from a sleepy rural backwater
of the Old South into a soulless piece of suburban real estate one can
recognize trends which are reshaping American society as a whole in
this post-industrial age.

Every large city or adjoining suburban area
includes neighborhoods which consist mainly of condos and
apartment buildings. While life in such places may include lavish physical
surroundings, it can also be quite lonely. In Ramsey County, Minnesota,
a high-school teacher who had spent almost a year in an apartment complex
commented upon the irony that in a spatial sense I am far closer
to my neighbors here than I was in the house from which I moved; but
in every important sense we we are separated here by a vast gulf of
detachment.

Before
moving to (apartment) Number Three, he explained, I lived
in a house that was part of a neighborhood. In an unobtrusive way the
people there were part of one anothers lives. We helped each other
move furniture and shovel walks and unclog drains and celebrate graduation
and mourn deaths. All in all we promoted a sense of continuity, and
of what has come to be called connectedness with something
larger than the self. It goes without saying that here in the apartment
complex we dont mingle in one anothers lives. We dont
celebrate each others joys or mourn each others losses,
although we must all have both. If a walk needs shoveling or a drain
is clogged, we call someone named Maintenance. If we need a cup of sugar,
we dont go to each other; we drive two to three miles to the store.
Thats how it is at Number Three. Thats why Ill not
be sorry to move on soon.

An
immigrant from Poland once told me that in that nation communities are
often formed from the personal networks needed to conduct black-market
activities. Someone who wants to buy an electronic gadget, for instance,
cannot simply pick one up at a store. The stores have a more limited
selection of products than what many customers want. To obtain consumer
luxuries, it is necessary to know someone, who knows someone else, and
so forth, until the chain of persona contacts reaches a person who can
supply the desired product. From a certain standpoint, then, the inconvenience
of obtaining such goods in socialist countries can become a blessing
in disguise.

Apart
from the traffic in illegal drugs, we in the United States do not have
that kind of community in connection with buying consumer products.
Shopping is an important experience for most Americans, but the experience
is tinged with personal meanings. People want to reward themselves for
something, or they enjoy the visual fantasy of a spectacular shopping
mall, or they imagine themselves getting bargains. In the big supermarkets,
it is possible to whisk around by oneself with a shopping cart, find
the items one wants, unload them on the check-out counter, hand the
cashier the money shown on the cash register, and say not a word to
anyone.

Such
events have contributed to the making of an anti-community.
This would be a society severely fragmented along economic and social
lines. The suburbs have become self-contained islands of affluence having
less and less to do with the cities from which they sprang. Well-educated,
well-paid, white-collar workers have become more sharply differentiated
from the kinds of people who work with their hands and the muscles of
their body. People of different races and ages live in separate neighborhoods.
Socioeconomic status defines affordable housing or the kind of place
where a person would want to live. This is the product of a social system
devoted not to community-building but to a life-long competition among
individuals to rise to the top. Individual self-advancement - is that
not what America is about?

It
starts in the schools. Education could be a process of transmitting
the communitys common culture to the next generation, so that
a cultural bond is established between people in their formative years.
Instead, all too often, the educational process has become a struggle
to achieve good grades and other personal distinctions, which will propel
one student to a subsequent successful career while another is left
behind. This is the first phase in the process of social cream
separation. People are separated from one another by differences
in rank and position as they progress in their different career tracks.

The
process continues after a person has graduated from school and embarked
upon a career. The idea that a career is a calling or an
opportunity to develop skill or expertise in a particular line of work
is overshadowed by the competitive aspect of it. Everyone is trying
to climb quickly to the top of the career ladder which exists in his
or her field of employment. In the United States, the economic reward
for belonging to top management in a corporation, professional firm,
or other such organization is disproportionately large. U.S. corporations
are known for their steep hierarchies of personnel, involving many layers
of supervision. All this accentuates the division between the chiefs
and Indians within the corporate structure, and weakens the sense of
community.

The
final stage in the career process would be retirement. First a person
goes to school to get a better job. Then the job becomes a vehicle for
obtaining better retirement benefits. Retirement is a kind of Last Judgment
by which working people are assigned an economic Heaven or Hell. Some
retirees receive truly generous support - big pensions on top of Social
Security on top of ample accumulated savings. Others are forced to live
on Social Security alone; and some do not even qualify for that. So
the socioeconomic divisions among senior citizens are quite wide. The
one group of affluent retirees winters in Hawaii, Florida, or Arizona,
takes Caribbean cruises, and indulges in expensive hobbies. Another
group is confined to life in urban high-rises, financially unable to
do much more. The economic progress achieved or not achieved during
ones working years becomes a permanent condition.

During
the 1980s,
average working hours in the United States have grown longer and not
shorter; certainly this is true of work hours contributed by the family
unit. The denial of adequate leisure to people in their working years
is destructive of community life. One reason we do not see as many people
today chatting pleasantly with their neighbors over backyard fences
is simply that working people often do not have the time to do much
more than work. There are more single parents who have to combine a
full-time job with a full-time responsibility to raise children and
attend to household chores. There are fewer adult women financially
free of the need to hold a paying job, who can volunteer for community
work or socialize with other women in the neighborhood. there are, in
some cases, fewer children. More families are breaking up. More people
are living alone in apartments or rented rooms. One finds community
mainly in places where one spends the bulk of ones time.

One
effect of the so-called information age is to hasten the
trend toward impersonal routines of living. People leave messages on
other peoples telephone-answering machines. Such devices allow
calls to be screened more effectively. Human contacts can be limited
to persons we choose to receive. Lacking intimate personal experiences,
we can let electronic technology deliver a commercially prepared image
of them into our homes. The personally expressive voices and faces of
popular singers, for instance, will appear on the screen of a television
set. we do not have to become involved with those persons beyond watching
their image from a comfortable sofa. For some lonely souls, pornographic
pictures or films can become a substitute for carnal relations with
another person. The more adventurous singles can line up dates for themselves
by advertising in newspapers. In this impersonal age, community exists
largely through symbols created by the electronic entertainment industry;
any good politician knows the value of plugging the local sports teams,
and being endorsed by professional athletes with whom his constituents
have become acquainted by way of television broadcasting.

As
much as I have implied that large corporations and other employers operate
in a way that destroys community, I must also admit that corporate life
itself does involve participation in a community. There is certainly
a social aspect to employment at such places. But now, in the 1980s,
even this advantage appears to be in danger. As U.S. employers have
become more cost conscious, they have trimmed operations and cut the
size of support staff. Less profitable factories and mines have been
closed down, creating ghost towns which bustling communities used to
be. Middle managers, forced into retirement or laid off, have not been
replaced. Such frills as company-sponsored picnics and softball teams
have been curtailed. The push to improve employee productivity has meant
less time to gossip with co-workers around the water cooler or even
at a nearby desk. At once-mighty Bethlehem Steel, now riddled with layoffs
at all levels, it is reported that remaining managers seem almost
in shock over how far the steelmaker has fallen. They roam darkened
hallways at the companys sleek black headquarters. With half the
offices empty, there is talk of selling the building.

There
used to be community life in the core cities.Eighty years ago, the city of Minneapolis was
a vibrant place, home to more than a half million persons. Today, its
population is 380,000. White flight to the suburbs, especially following
race riots in the late 1960s, accounts for much of this decline. The
trolley-car tracks were ripped up and sold for scrap in the 1950s by
business interests connected with the mob. The ridership on street cars
peaked in the 1920s. Public transit today carries far fewer passengers.

Gangs
of violent youth make it dangerous to live in certain neighborhoods,
especially those in north Minneapolis between Broadway and Dowling.
Gun-toting gang members are engaged in a war with rival gangs to gain
the upper hand and control the drug market. Calls to police to investigate
suspicious activity are often ignored unless there is obvious violence.
When the police arrest persons for criminal activity, prosecutors often
fail to prosecute and judges fail to impose meaningful sentences. Prison
space is scarce and there is a sentiment that young people engaging
in criminal activity can be dealt with in more humane ways than by sentencing
them to prison. Essentially, the policymakers wish not to acknowledge
a problem which city residents know evidently exists.

Minneapolis
politics are dominated by a network of neighborhood organizations which
act as junior policymakers assisting the City Council. They act as gatekeepers
to decide what kind of development they wish to have in their neighborhood.
Paid staff organize regular committee meetings, producing a mountain
of paperwork. The Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) has handed
each neighborhood a certain portion of the revenues which used to go
to the government on the theory that the local people could decide better
how to spend this money than officials at city hall. Since previous
city administrations overspent on deals with private developers, the
current administration is strapped for cash. Local property taxes have
skyrocketed in the past five years. In addition, the city administration
is steadily increasing fines and fees. Police officers in squad cars
are looking for speeders on the highways instead of gun-toting criminals.

A
particular school of crime-fighting thought believes that neighborhood
crime is caused by uncaring landlords who fill their apartment buildings
with the criminally inclined. Therefore, the solution to crime is to
apply pressure against these so-called problem properties
and perhaps close them down. City housing inspectors are looking for
code violations which will allow the city to punish the owners of these
properties. A side benefit is that, if the city can put them out of
business, opportunities exist for others to acquire their properties
at a reduced price. Neighborhood organizations are full of individuals
urging this kind of solution. Not coincidentally, the police assign
certain officers to meet regularly with the neighborhood associations
and block clubs on the basis of identifying the problem properties and
bringing appropriate pressure to bear.

City
politics is such that anyone with property is viewed as a potential
abuser whose business may be exploiting others. If drug dealers hang
out in front of certain convenience stores, the owners and managers
of those stores must be encouraging this kind of illegal activity or,
as one City Council member put it, getting rich from catering
to the drug crowd. The police tend to view this as a problem that the
business manager must address himself. The discussion of crime seldom
focuses upon the individual criminals perhaps because such attention
could be interpreted as exhibiting racial bias. In fact, when the mayor
recently announced that the police would be targeting three violent
gangs, the leaders of several churches in north Minneapolis denounced
this move as racial profiling.

What
we have, then, is a community deeply divided along racial and class
lines. We have young men and women bred and raised in single-parent
homes who look to other young people for companionship and a community
which regards them as a surplus population. There are fewer programs
for youth than in previous decades and the programs offer fewer direct
services. Instead, the money goes to non-profit organizations staffed
with college graduates who talk about the problems but do little themselves.
Elsewhere, there are enclaves of prosperity in the city of Minneapolis
where affluent youth hang out at coffee houses. Every neighborhood wants
more of this type of clean business and fewer auto-repair shops or factories.
In this post-industrial age, people expect jobs that require their literate
skills.

Large
business organizations milk the taxpayer for subsidies while bribing
political activists by donating a certain portion of their profits (typically
5%) to charity. The charitable donations, in fact, fund staff positions
with non-profit organizations which these activists can fill. And so,
large businesses and their millionaire owners are quite popular in the
citys political culture while small businesses are prey to be
stigmatized and destroyed. The news media are continually spreading
this moralistic message.

In
the past year, the county has imposed a new sales tax to help build
a new stadium on the edge of downtown which will be home for the areas
professional baseball team, the Minnesota Twins, owned by a billionaire
banker. In the same year, the state decided to fund a new stadium on
campus for the University of Minnesota. The owner of the Minnesota Vikings,
the states professional football stadium, wants taxpayer help
in building a third stadium which will be used by his team. Chances
are that he will get it. Meanwhile, the city of Minneapolis is so strapped
for cash that it is planning to close three of the regional libraries
and curtail hours in the library system. The public-employment pensions
are coming due.

This
is what passes for community life in my own city of Minneapolis in the
first decade of the 21st Century. In comparison, the lack of community
in Gwinnett County, Georgia, in the late 1980s seems quite attractive.
Perhaps this is punishment for my having passed judgment on that type
of society in an earlier publication.